


Autexousious

by Polyhexian



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Boy I do love this boy, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24364363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyhexian/pseuds/Polyhexian
Summary: You're laying on your back and feeling the energon well up and out of your chest and you aren't sure if it hurts, or how much. It's not the first time you've been stabbed in the chest but you're starting to think it might be the last. Is this it?
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	Autexousious

Sweet, but dull. 

You're laying on your back and feeling the energon well up and out of your chest and you aren't sure if it hurts, or how much. It's not the first time you've been stabbed in the chest but you're starting to think it might be the last. Is this it?

Your life hasn't been an especially impressive list of accomplishments, or non accomplishments. At least people have _heard_ of Starscream. You aren't smart enough to be manipulative, not driven enough to be power hungry. You know you're the dumb one, people tell you often enough.

You stare up at the ceiling, craggy stone peppered with blue crystals. It's actually really pretty! Very ornamental, but in a natural way. No one put those things there, they just grew like that. It's definitely not the worst thing you could be looking at while you bleed out. Like, Metalhawk could still be here dragging you around making you watch a bunch of dumb betrayals and dramatic reveals you can't understand or invest yourself in, so thank Primus for that at least. 

All you'd ever wanted was things to be easy. Find someone you trust to point at stuff and say "go there, do that," drink three square cubes a day, don't get stabbed in the chest. Fragged that one up big time. It's been a rough day. 

All anyone has ever done is hurt you. In their defense, though, all you've ever done is hurt others. You pick up and follow anyone who will take you and when they point you shoot. You haven't cared about much of anyone but yourself and that's probably why you're bleeding out for no good reason right now. You wish you'd been a better person, maybe been a little discerning over who you were shooting at and why. Maybe you'd still be bleeding out right now, but at least you might be bleeding out for a good reason. Or maybe not. People die for dumb reasons all the time.

You're just starting to fizzle out, optics flickering, waiting for the inevitable closedown activation when someone vaults you over their shoulders and drags you right back out of the dark and you get to see a medic for the first time in like- honestly, you were flipping through dimensions for awhile and you really have no idea how long that was or if time was even real then. Awhile. 

A stranger fixes the hole in your chest and he doesn't talk to you the entire time, but it means something to you. You're gonna get killed eventually because you're not as smart, not as fast, not as good a shot as somebody else. It's not worth trying so hard to stay alive when it's inevitable you're going to lose in the end eventually. May as well go down knowing you weren't the bad guy next time.

* * *

Alright! The war is over. Maybe! Probably not. They keep saying it is, but like, even you aren't that dumb. The tension is thick in the air, like exhaust. But you aren't going to deal with that. _You_ are not getting involved in any of this stuff anymore. You left your faction badge in the triage tent where a medic you didn't know patched the hole in your chest and you don't miss it one bit.

You _like_ spending time at Blurr's bar. There's Autobots here, Decepticons, NAILS, and you know what? They're all fun. And when you're nice to these strangers they smile at you. You buy somebody a drink and they do karaoke with you and maybe you aren't friends but they're people you spend time with, and no matter what this is, this hazy temporary world where nobody's shooting at each other and you can sing karaoke with totally strangers even though everyone makes fun of your voice, you like it. It's something worth protecting. 

* * *

It's been another miserable day. Why can't anyone on Cybertron ever be normal? Sometimes you think you're the only one who _prefers_ Cybertron quiet and boring to being literally perpetually on fire. You know something crazy went down, there were COMBINERS stomping around, for Primus sake, and Starscream was involved, but Starscream is always involved, so that's nothing new. You try to stay out of that stuff now. You get a heads up through the pipeline someone is doing some murdery stuff down in the east side, you just avoid the east side until someone warns you the murdery stuff has moved to the west side.

You're in Maccadam's when you see on TV how bad things got on that other planet, um, Caminus. They got stomped all over, but they're not _like_ Cybertronians. They haven't been at war so long that getting stomped on by a dude made of five smaller dudes is just like, another Tuesday. They're totally devastated. They're not even equipped for pulling people out of the debris. 

You catch the first space bridge over there and you don't really ask yourself why. You probably have a reason, but you don't really know what it is. You know better than to stick your neck out- you'd already decided to stop getting involved since you always ended up being on the wrong side, you must just have a really poor judge of character or something. They asked for help, though, and somehow, your feet moved and brought you here without you telling them too. You were never especially good at self preservation.

The Camiens are in chaos. They're trying to organize but it seems like most of them are getting their first PTSD breakdowns, so they're not especially helpful. You pick a toppled building that no one is dealing with and you wade waist deep into rubble and start digging. 

By the time the Camien sun is directly overhead (noon local time, but evening for you) you've pulled six people from the wreckage. Four of them were unconscious, one was dead and one was sobbing. Someone came and took them from you, dead or alive, and you hope they ended up in the servos of someone who could help them. You can't do much other than this.

You reach down and grab another boulder and heave, fighting the rebar braces that keep it held down. This piece _has_ to move, though, because you can sense heat a few feet down and this is the only way in. This building must have been ten floors or so and you're certain you've only gotten through three so far. You aren't done. 

"Hey!" you flinch at the voice, waiting to be told what it is you've done wrong _now_. "Hey, I brought you some energon!"

You turn, cocking your head at the stranger approaching. You recognize vaguely he has a lot of the features you were told means he's probably this "girl" thing Windblade tried to explain to you, but it didn't really sink in. You really tried to wrap your head around it, you did, but you gave up eventually and just figured you didn't need to get it.

"Hi! I'm Lightbright," the maybe-girl says, holding a box of energon cubes in a satchel around his- wait! That was it, her, there was a word thing- her neck, "You've been at this for hours and I haven't seen you take a break once! You have to be running low on fuel by now, so I brought you some- I brought you some energon." She stumbles over some rubble as she approaches you and you watch her, trying to figure out the trick.

If this was Starscream, this would be a ploy to get you to listen to him long enough to convince you to do whatever he wanted. If it Shockwave, it would be outright poisoned, probably with something freaky and mutagenic. You don't know this Camien. You don't know what her games are like or what you should expect. 

She extends a cube toward you when she reaches you, face lit up in a smile as she stares at you and you stare at the cube, but you don't move to take it. You are so done with dumb games and getting involved in schemes.

"Why?" you ask, wings buzzing at your back, "What izz trick?"

"What is-" she repeats, staring at you. Her arm drops before she shakes her head and holds it out to you again, "Trick? It's just a cube of energon."

"Nothing izz free," you say, narrowing your eyes, "What doezz Lightbright want?"

"I… want to give you a cube of energon?" she says, and she looks confused. Not used to people being blunt, apparently. 

"What do you _want_ for it?" You repeat, not giving in, "Wazzpinator not like gamezz anymore. Juzzt tell Wazzpinator what cozzt of fuel izz and he will pay it."

"It… it's free," she says, sounding a little upset, "You've been digging people out of the dirt for _hours_. Isn't that enough to earn a cube of energon?"

Ah! Yes, now that's an argument you can accept. Payment for services rendered. You accept the cube and sit down, drinking.

"Your name is Waspinator?" she asks, regaining her smile. She smiles a lot. Camiens smile a lot in general honestly. 

"Yezz," you buzz.

"You're from Cybertron then, huh?" Lightbright asks. Why is she still here? She gave you the cube. You narrow your optics at her again.

"Yezz," you say.

She hesitates a bit. "You've just been working alone all day and I wanted to thank you for your help."

"Why?" you ask again. What part of the game is that? You don't need buttering up. That's Starscream's thing and it's really annoying because it always works. 

"Wow, are all Cybertronians this suspicious?" She asks with an awkward laugh.

"The zzmart onezz," you tell her. 

"That's kind of depressing." Lightbright's smile falters. She stands in silence for a moment.

"Why are you being zzo nizze to Wazzpinator?" You ask. You want an honest answer. You'll do whatever she wants if she'll just _tell_ you what it is 

"I really don't want anything from you. I just wanted to say thank you for coming and helping. You pulled a friend of mine, Lickety-Split from this building, and the medic said she wouldn't have made it much longer if someone hadn't found her."

"Oh," you respond, blinking, "Lightbright izz welcome, then." 

"Here, um, take one more for later," she said, fishing another cube out and setting it on the rock you had pulled away, "I'll come check on you again later. Thank you, Waspinator."

You watch her climb back over the wreckage and leave curiously. She really didn't ask for anything. How strange. 

You grab the next slab you need to get through and heave it up onto your shoulder to push it up so you can get to the next warm spot and you wonder if this is what it feels like to be the good guy for once. It's a good feeling. A feeling you think you want to cling to with white knuckled claws and never let go of. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey anybody remember how waspinator was in the FIRST spacebridge over to help caminus after the combiner incident and when people were like hey thanks he was like wtf. Why
> 
> Waspinator is a good boy. He really seemed to have a change of heart after he almost died in Dark Cybertron
> 
> God imagine if I used the zz thing this entire fic. Can you imagine


End file.
